Shock Labour analysis reveals that the Bibby Stockholm barge is
costing more than £800 per person per night to house asylum
seekers.
It comes almost a year after the Prime Minister promised to end
costly asylum hotel use. Despite this promise, hotel use has
surged - from 37,000 people last November, to over 50,000 people
according to the latest statistics.
50 asylum seekers are reported to be on board the Bibby
Stockholm, at a cost of £41,000 per day. That means a cost of
over £800 per person per night - more than five times the cost of
housing people in hotels.
Labour has a plan to recruit over 1,000 new caseworkers and to
set up a major new returns unit with a further 1,000 staff, to
clear the backlog, increase returns and end hotel use within 12
months.
Labour’s plan will:
- Hire more than 1,000 more caseworkers on an expedited process
(a 50 per cent increase on current asylum casework levels) to
bust the backlog and get through cases efficiently.
- Implement targets and standards to ensure decisions are made
well and productivity increases. New staff will be recruited at a
higher grade than recent Home Office caseworker recruitment, to
improve productivity after the Tory downgrade of staffing in 2013
led to productivity falling.
- Create a returns unit to triage and fast-track removals of
those such as failed asylum seekers with no right to be in the
UK, with 1,000 staff to ensure enforcement.
- Invest in temporary Nightingale-style courts to ensure
appeals can be quickly heard, and removals processed.
Under Labour’s plans, once the backlog created by the Tories is
cleared, it should no longer be necessary to accommodate asylum
seekers in hotels, barges or former military sites, like RAF
Scampton, which are currently costing the taxpayer over £2
billion a year.
Instead, a Labour government will rely on long-standing,
cost-effective asylum accommodation, which has space for 58,000
asylum applicants at any one time. This has been sufficient in
the past, but the Tory government’s failure to tackle the record
backlog has made them reliant on costly hotels once this asylum
accommodation reached capacity. When Labour left office in 2010
the backlog stood at just 19,000, well within the 58,000
capacity.
MP, Labour’s Shadow Home
Secretary, said:
“The Conservatives have broken our asylum system and are wasting
ever more taxpayers' money on expensive barges and hotels because
they’ve failed to get any grip. Instead of tackling the
problem, they just keep making the costs worse.
“Labour has pledged to end all asylum hotel use by clearing the
asylum backlog, with more caseworkers and a new Returns Unit, to
save the taxpayer £2 billion. The British public want to see
strong border security and a properly controlled and fair asylum
system, and that’s what Labour’s plan will deliver.”
Ends
Notes:
- According to the latest figures, 50,546 people are in asylum
hotels - up from 37,000 one year ago
Illegal immigrants are not
entitled to luxury hotels -
